Civic-minded Lucile Roemer served Duluth

She was the first woman elected to the City Council and was a driving force behind the city's library.

By TIM HARLOW, Star Tribune

Last update: October 19, 2009 - 10:18 PM

Lucile E. Roemer, a stay-at-home mom, immersed herself in the civic life of Duluth, the northern Minnesota city she called home from 1940 to 1972.

She made headlines in 1956 as the first woman elected to the Duluth City Council. The mayor at that time, Eugene Lambert, appointed her as the city's acting mayor in his absence. She subsequently ran for mayor in 1959 and narrowly lost to E. Clifford Mork. Her public service continued in the 1960s, when she was appointed chief of the Duluth Public Library. In that position she worked to promote, design and get plans in place for a new facility, which opened in 1980.

"She was extensively educated and an intelligent woman," said her son John Roemer of Sausalito, Calif.

Lucile Roemer died of congestive heart failure Oct. 7 at Nirvana's Caring Hands in Bloomington. She was 99.

She wasted no time getting involved in public matters after she moved from Minneapolis to Duluth with her husband, Claude. She joined the League of Women Voters "as a way to get started," her son said. She subsequently became president of the organization and was active in the American Association of University Women and legislative chairwoman of the Parent-Teacher Association at Duluth East High School, the school her sons attended.

Lucile was born in Fort Cobb, Okla. She attended Hamline University in St. Paul, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota, from which she earned a bachelor's of science degree in library science in 1933. She taught French and English in the Minneapolis public schools and worked in the catalog department of the University of Minnesota library. She also worked in the reference department of the extension library at the Minnesota Department of Education in St. Paul, her son said.

From 1960 to 1964 she worked as a radio advertising executive for KDAL-AM, where one of her sayings to potential clients to dissuade them from using TV to sell their products was "God never meant pictures to fly through the air," her son said.

After her husband died in 1972, Roemer moved back to Minneapolis from Duluth. She lived in a book-filled duplex on Lyndale Avenue and often took trips to the British Isles. She would rent apartments in London's Chelsea district and stay for six months at a time to take in concerts, theater and travel, her son said.

In addition to John, Roemer is survived by another son, Paul Crawford Roemer, of Minneapolis; three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is pending.

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